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BEIJING and ARMONK,
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06 Sep 2011:
IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced this week the continued adoption of its smarter computing systems, software, and services across China's private and public sectors.

IBM is working with the China National Bureau of Statistics, Guizhou Provincial Health Department and Guizhou Mobile to help each build more advanced IT environments based on IBM's optimized system architecture, data and analytics integration, and cloud computing capabilities. Through these smarter computing initiatives, each organization will improve their operational efficiencies and end-user services.

"IBM's smarter computing capabilities are designed to help clients across all industries build a solid IT framework and enable the business transformation required on the journey to a smarter planet," said Andy Ho, general manager of Growth Markets for IBM Systems and Technology Group. "Our smarter computing initiative leverages IBM's strengths in the key areas of big data and analytics integration, optimized systems and cloud computing to transform client IT infrastructures and make them smarter."

Data integration for smarter statistics

The China National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) organizes and coordinates statistical data across China and plays a key role in supporting government decision-making in the country. However, due to the increasing complexity and volume of data that NBS collects and manages, the organization was increasingly challenged by underperforming equipment, the proliferation of information islands, low efficiency in resource utilization, and high operation and maintenance costs.

In early 2010, the NBS Data Management Center launched an innovative IT strategy to build a core smarter computing business platform leveraging the cloud. The platform, anchored by IBM Power systems, ensured the smooth operation of two major NBS application systems – the sixth national population census and the direct business information reporting process. In particular, during the sixth national population census, the new system completed statistical forms for 1.3 billion people in just two minutes. The same process running on the former system took an entire day to complete.

The NBS system leverages IBM PowerVM virtualization technology, IBM Tivoli Monitor, and IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager to monitor core business systems and handle the automatic distribution of computing resources in the country.

NBS will soon embark on the second phase of the IT infrastructure project which will add four IBM Power 780 servers to the mix. In addition to increasing online direct reporting to 10 million cases a month, the solution will also enable the integration of system resources.

Smarter telecommunications to deliver better health services

In Guizhou, where hostile weather and terrain have made it difficult to not only provide medical services, medical fee reimbursement services, farmers' well-being and health were always at risk. To address the problem, Guizhou Provincial Health Department and Guizhou Mobile jointly developed an information system for the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme (NRCMS), based on a wireless cloud solution.

The NRCMS platform was built on IBM Power Systems, consisting of IBM PowerVM server virtualization technology and storage virtualization technology. The cloud platform not only resolves the traditional 'silo' model of IT development, but provides a full-scale and virtualized platform, capable of delivering IT resources in the form of services. As a result, the platform has enabled more flexible resource management, reduced the demand on IT resources, and lowered operation and maintenance costs.

Today, farmers in remote villages can get reimbursed for their medical fees for minor illnesses simply by swiping their insurance ID cards in card readers at community clinics. For cases of serious illness, farmers can choose to settle their medical expenses with the township, county and provincial health institutions, and then apply for reimbursement online. With thousands of information terminals installed in clinics across 64 counties and 805 townships, the NRCMS information system is able to support more than 18 million people in rural areas.

In addition to the mobile cloud, Guizhou Mobile turned to IBM to help develop a cloud platform to use in developing new business applications. Since February 2010, Guizhou Mobile has launched 36 business applications. Among them are: the Guizhou Provincial Health Department Office Automation application; the Health Department website group system; a resident health archive; weather forecasting application; an agricultural machinery subsidy system; an e-ticket solution for tourist sites; and a wireless city.